Creating a way of living each day, still including travel tales, and appreciation of places, events, and cultures, but also thoughtful examination of life and all that entails.
I welcome any and all questions, comments, arguments, refutations, criticisms... sea stories..

Wednesday, June 03, 2009

The Other Addiction..

On the subject of entertainment, I adhere to Jefferson's quote: "I cannot live without books."

One of the very real joys of the path I am on currently, is that I am now finding that I have the time to start in reading the ever growing stack of books I have bought at one time or another. Some date back almost 15 years, to a mysterious but lovely little bookseller in St. Louis, where you had to knock on the door and if you looked acceptable to the owner, he would let you in to shop..

Still, much like a drug addiction, the books you have just aren't enough.

Today's order from betterworldbooks:

Survival with Style : Bradford Angier (1972)

Hayduke Lives! : Edward Abbey (Hardcover, 1990)

Epitaph for a Desert Anarchist : James Bishop (Hardcover, 1994)

Rational Choice and Moral Agency : David Schmidtz (Paperback, 1997)

On the Shortness of Life : C.D.N. Costa, Lucius Annaeus Seneca (Paperback, 2005)

I am always looking for good sources for cheap books so if you have any suggestions.. send them along!

If you have not yet discovered it, I recommend GoodReads.com. Wonderful site which for me at least provides a more than acceptable alternative to browsing in a book shop, which has always seemed to me to be lacking in online book sellers. You just don't get the random factor in online searches or even browsing without having to manually sort though more listings than you would have to see books in a shop. I've not found a better or more comfortable source of book inspiration online.

Plus for those who are more social than I tend to be, you can even meet interesting people who share your love of books, or particular genres. Heck, even I have met a few interesting people who share some of my more quirky or obscure interests.. check it out..

"How to Overthrow the System: brew your own beer; kick in your Tee Vee; kill your own beef; build your own cabin and piss off the front porch whenever you bloody well feel like it." — Edward Abbey

"I heartily accept the motto, "That government is best which governs least"; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe — "That government is best which governs not at all"; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. " — Henry David Thoreau (Civil Disobedience)

"If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth--certainly the machine will wear out… but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn." — Henry David Thoreau

"A man may be very industrious, and yet not spend his time well. There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of life getting his living." — Henry David Thoreau